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Historian E.H. Carr once succinctly remarked, '[Historical facts] are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use; these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.' What really matters is not whether a historian's interpretation can lay claim to being definitive, but rather the logic of the argument he constructs.
Faure attempts to show that there was 'continuous' rural prosperity right down to the 1920s because of the peasants' involvement in international trade. The basic issue, therefore, is not whether the peasants had ever benefited from trade at some point in time, but whether those benefits had been enjoyed on a sustained basis or whether the peasants had procured enough profits from trade booms to help them tide over periodic depressions. Let us examine the records of the export of three commodities under survey, namely, tea, sugar, and silk. For tea, Faure admits that export had declined rapidly after the 1880s, but he is quick to point out that 'tea growing was only marginal to the farm economy [of Guangdong] and its loss caused little stir [whereas] Jiangsu was not a major tea producer, and was not seriously affected by changes in the tea trade', (p. 109). This is quite true. For the sugar trade, there was a boom in the 1870s and early 1880s, and there is little doubt that these were auspicious years for Guangdong (particularly the Chao(zhou)-Shan(tou) district) since it was the most important sugar-producing province in China. However, as Faure admits, Chinese sugar lost to foreign competition from the 1890s and, apart from a brief recovery during the First World War, the sugar trade had gone on an irretrievably downhill course. How did this affect the multitude of cane-cultivators? Faure contends, 'with rice as a crop to fall back on, the loss of the cane market did not lead to any sharp loss in farm income, even though it formed a noticeable loss in the export trade', (p. 111). Such a contention is, in my opinion, problematic. It is too often assumed, as in the case of Faure, that the peasants could readily change their production plan in order to get the best market. The measure of the disadvantage of a falling market for one particular crop, according to such a line of reasoning, is simply the difference between the income from that crop and the income from alternatives. The crucial question is: did the traditional peasants respond to market changes quickly enough to offset the losses from a falling market? It is true that many cane-cultivators